Star Trek Style Faster-Than-Light Travel Possible: Researchers

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Speedy travel has always been mankind's greatest ambition. Reaching from one point to another at light's speed could be considered a remarkable achievement. But what if we told you faster-than-light speed could also be possible. This would certainly change space travel - making Star Wars, Star Trek, and every other sci-fi movie a reality!

 
Star Trek Style Faster-Than-Light Travel Possible

Presently, the fastest spacecraft that is already in space is the Parker Solar Probe that zooms at a top speed of 450,000 mph. With this speed, you can go from the southern tip of India to the northern-most frontier in just a couple of seconds. At the same time, it would take the Parker Solar Probe about 6,633 years to reach Earth's nearest neighboring solar system.

 

Introducing Warp Drive Or Faster-Than-Light Space Travel

If we ever want to explore space or even travel seamlessly between stars, then we certainly need much faster transport, something that moves even faster than light. But so far, this has only been possible in sci-fi stories. But isn't fiction based on certain ounces of reality?

Star Trek Style Faster-Than-Light Travel Possible

Star Trek fans know that characters here use warp drive technology to speed across galaxies and stars. But warp drive is still possible only on paper and practical enactments have been restricted to fiction only. However, back in March, researchers claimed to have overcome some of the major challenges in the theory of warp drives bringing it closer to reality.

Warp Drive: Overcoming Challenges

Before we dive into the solutions, let's take a look at the challenges that space travel imposes on us. Most of the theories and understanding of space come from Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, which states that space and time are fused and that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Star Trek Style Faster-Than-Light Travel Possible

The theory also talks about how mass and energy warp spacetime. For instance, hefty objects like stars and black holes curve spacetime around them and we see this even in our sci-fi how our heroes are worried about getting sucked in or falling into these gravity loops. This is where Star Trek's warp drive comes into the picture, which suggested that it compressed space in front of it and expanded the spacetime behind it.

While black hole curves were one aspect of the problem, space travel has a couple of other issues as well. Warp drive would require a bubble of flat spacetime around the spaceship and curving spacetime around that bubble to reduce distance - by the above-mentioned compression and expansion.

Star Trek Style Faster-Than-Light Travel Possible

This is where negative mass comes into the picture, which is a theorized type of matter. Warp drive would use this negative energy to create the spacetime bubble. And negative energy would require huge amounts of matter, which is simply impractical.

Warp Drive: Space Drive Possible Pretty Soon

Researchers Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire have published two papers that elaborate on solutions that overcome the challenges of warp drive. Here, scientists have discovered that modifying spacetime within the bubble could remove the need to use negative energy. This solution, though, does not produce a warp drive that can go faster than light.

Another paper by Erik Lentz also provides answers in his research paper that surpass the need for negative energy. Using a different geometric approach, Lentz solved the General Relativity equations and found that warp drive doesn't require negative energy. At the same time, his solution allows the bubble to travel faster than the speed of light.

That said, these are still mathematical models. We still need experimental proof. But considering that we've come this far, Star Trek warp drive into deep space could be quite possible in the near future!

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